I often speak about customer service and the image it has on the company in the marketplace. This is a matter that business leaders should pay close attention to. Your marketplace image is either an asset or detriment to growth. It is how you are perceived by current clients, and it carries over to your prospective clients. Arguably, the most important component of your image is how you engage with your customers from a service. Your image in the marketplace is directly tied to your ability to grow – and it’s controllable. This begs the question; how do you control your marketplace image?
Managing the Moments of Truth
Your image is what attracts customers or repels them. And your image is the sum total of every touch point - think "moment of truth" - you've had with your customers. Either the sum total is more positive, or more negative. Every single day you will have moments of truth, and the only thing that matters is that you "win" every single one. This means your marketplace image is improved that day. If you string together these positive days into weeks and month, you're controlling your marketplace image over time. Does this make sense to you?
The Humanity of Service
Serving others is a basic part of human life. Think about it. We serve our spouses and partners; our children; our community; our friends. At the heart of serving others are the basic emotions of love, humility, self-happiness, and emotional maturity. People who serve with excellence are often inspired by a cause greater than themselves.
Organizational leaders have an obligation to create the company Purpose, Mission, Vision and Values, along with fostering a culture where serving others thrives. To achieve excellence in customer service, employees are inspired by leaders to embrace and internalize the Purpose, Mission, Vision and Values for themselves.
Explore External Customer MOMENTS OF TRUTH
Looking back at one of my professional experiences, I was assigned as a Vice President of Operations to save a partnership where we were failing. Specifically, our customers – customers were reporting on their satisfaction surveys that our services were coming up short. In healthcare this is commonly known as the “patient experience” – the king of customer service measures, and has a huge impact on our client’s business. An initial objective was to understand the experience from the patient’s perspective, as it related to the services my departments provided. My team and I set out to map each of the patient “moments of truth”. Once identified, it became necessary to put our bias aside, and really look at our performance from the patient’s point of view.
Explore Internal Customer MOMENTS OF TRUTH
Everyone has a “customer” and "moments of truth" to win. It makes sense for both the senior leadership and the internal teams (who serve the “front-line” people directly serving the customers) to do the exact same process. Internal customer service should be fluid and efficient for those interacting with the customers. No customer wants to hear excuses from the front-line team that the inner workings of the company are interfering with delivering customer service excellence. Win the internal "moments of truth" as well as the external.
Everyone is Serving Someone
An Early Lesson in Customer Service
When I was a young manager, I made a basic customer service mistake that stuck with me. I was working for a leading management services company, serving as the Director of Environmental Services at a rural hospital. Environmental Services boils down to two types of work: scheduled and unscheduled. One breezy fall day I received a call from the president of the hospital, who happened to also be the one who signed our service agreement. He said “Ed, can you please have someone come down to the administrative corridor and clean up the leaves accumulating in the vestibule?” I politely explained that the vestibule to which he referred was cleaned on the evening schedule, and that I didn’t have anyone extra to send over. The conversation ended. About thirty minutes later, I received an overhead page that I had an outside call (that’s how it was done then). I called the switchboard and she put through the Regional Manager from the company I worked for. Guess what he wanted to discuss? It was a long time ago, but I do recall his is language was both direct and colorful. I did experience an attitude adjustment, even an epiphany. The leaves were cleaned up, by me, immediately.
Ten Foundational Customer Service Pillars
If leaders have created a strong Purpose, Mission, Vision and Values driving culture to inspire the team – then the next step is to coach common-sense behaviors, and build them into your customer service muscle memory.
It’s About the Human Relationship: Be kind and be a consistent face that they like and they can trust.
Over Deliver: Know the client’s expectations, deliver on promises, go above and beyond.
Service Recovery: When you have a misfire, own it and fix it.
Be Easy to Work With: Never allow your internal bureaucracy to get in the way.
Be an Attentive Listener: Make them feel like they’re your only customer.
Sense of Urgency: Be timely in all your follow-up to requests. Keep them up-to-date.
Adapt and Innovate: Adapt to the changes in your market and continuously innovate to meet your client’s needs. And tell your clients about your innovations.
It’s About Them: In B2B, Ask about their business, their brand and their image with their customers. Or, their family and hobbies if you're in B2C.
Exploit Delighted Customers: Ask for their advocacy. Referrals are the best way to secure new customers.
Thank Them: Express your appreciation for their business – every single time.
The Power of Service Recovery
In business, something invariably goes wrong when trying to service your customers. Whether the product is delivered late; the field technician doesn’t make you feel like you’re their most important customer; or the hospital president is told the leaves will have to wait – hey, it happens. Pray that you learn about it right away. If you don’t, this is a more serious problem. If you do hear about it, how should you respond?
Engage the customer in person if possible.
Listen and let the customer speak, vent, and simply get their frustration out in the open.
Acknowledge and accept responsibility for the failure – period, nothing else. *Do not try to explain what caused the failure – it doesn’t matter in the moment.
Be empathetic (not sympathetic), convey understanding of the grief the failure caused.
Promise to fix the problem – then do it.
Return to the customer to communicate the problem was corrected.
Circle back to the client upon their next interaction to see how it went.
There have been many studies about the “service recovery paradox” that have always fascinated me. The concept is that a customer who experiences service recovery actually becomes more loyal to the company than had a service failure never occurred! What company doesn’t want loyal customers? The following illustration effectively conveys this phenomenon.
Obviously, this is not suggesting that we should plan for service failure and subsequent service recovery. However, it does say that every employee must understand the importance of handling service recovery effectively and swiftly. It is vital to the relationship with your clients, and the image of your company in the marketplace.
Hire for Success
Getting the right people from the beginning is essential. Be as selective about attitude and soft skills (aka Emotional Intelligence) as you are about technical skills, possibly even more. When interviewing try to discern the candidate’s human ability to connect with others and be great at customer service, with both internal and external customers. Here is what I recommend you look for through your interview discussions. Watch body language and behavior very carefully.
Authentic Humility – watch for candidates that express self-confidence, but not arrogance. Listen for expressions of teamwork and collaboration, rather than heroic victories centered on themselves.
Enthusiasm and Passion – do they sit upright, make eye contact, and smile? Do you hear the enthusiasm in their speech, or is it monotone and low in volume? Do feel energy from them?
Likeability – how does this candidate make you feel? Do you like being around them? Do they have a sense of humor? Do they convey warmth? Did they ask good questions?
Respect – does the candidate convey respect for others through their comments, or do they criticize others? Did he/she dress appropriately for the interview? Did they research the company beforehand?
Self-Happiness – do they seem happy with where they are in life and where they’re heading? Is their glass half full, or half empty based on their behavior? What is their overall attitude like?
Definitely ask your People Services and Talent Acquisition partners to assist. It will require you to be very attentive with the candidate, with no distractions. Take notes of course. If your company is committed to a culture of customer service, this is a worthwhile investment.
Self Reflection: Are You A Partner or Commodity Vendor?
You should know how your service or product is viewed by your customer. This will help you understand how you fit into their world, what to expect from them, and how you should behave. It may also provide insight into your product or service perceived value in the marketplace.
Another Lesson - Is the Customer Always Right?
Serving as a Division Operations Manager, I had a client that was rightfully upset about service failures. She claimed our site-director was not being supported by our local and corporate resources. I visited this client often, and each time she was aggressive about our inability to reach agreed upon performance standards. She began threatening to terminate the contract.
I agreed with her assessment of our service failures, but disagreed with her evaluation as to the cause. I knew our site-director was being well supported with both local and corporate resources. The actual issue was that the site-director was not taking direction from our subject-matter-experts. Also, her leadership skills were not up to the challenge. I was unsuccessful making this case to the client.
Weeks later I informed the client that I had decided to remove and replace the site director – in the interest of the partnership – to which she again threatened to terminate. I explained that if I did not go ahead with replacement, services would continue to deteriorate, and she would terminate anyway. I went ahead and made the change, and true to her word, she delivered notice of termination. Over the next few weeks, with the new site-director, the situation greatly improved. It was clear the newly assigned director was well suited for the position. Thankfully, the contract was retained.
Conclusion
Today there are large amounts of complex data, benchmarks, and metrics available to help you manage the organization. So many that it can be difficult to decide which data is the most important to use. A critical component that is not so easy to measure is human behavior, yet it is the cornerstone of customer service excellence. The customers service experience is directly connected to your company image. Your company image will directly impact your ability to grow. Organizational leaders will do their company well by examining their culture and customer service touch points.
About the Author
Ed Snowden, Business Advisor, Consultant, Coach, Trainer
Ed has over 45 years of progressive growth in leadership responsibility at two Fortune 500 management services and hospitality companies, where he won several performance awards. He has extensive experience in a multitude of business capacities including: sales and sales leadership; strategic account management of a portfolio in excess of $450M, operations management of teams in excess of 500 people and operating budgets of over $60MM; client retention; and new product development.
Ed founded Leverage Experience, LLC for the purpose of sharing his skills and experience with others for the purpose of improving their business. He is a business consultant, advisor, coach and trainer.
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